


it just keeps going

by tootsonnewts



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, born to make art history zine, invisible monsters au, mentioned non-con substance abuse/sales, soap opera level dramatics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 23:26:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17497361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tootsonnewts/pseuds/tootsonnewts
Summary: Mark Palasio has had a string of bad luck lately. Unable to speak due to a disfiguring gunshot wound, betrayed by the man he loved, and determined to find something new, his life is forever changed when Yuri Alexander storms through it. Together, they go on a mission of enlightenment and light felony perpetration until they find their destiny.A tale of friendship, revenge, and (not so) petty crime inspired by Invisible Monsters.





	it just keeps going

**Author's Note:**

> i can't say enough how good of an experience working on this zine was. everyone was so incredibly kind and talented, and i had so much fun!
> 
> i hope you enjoy my take on chuck p's modern literature (all the fun and violence with none of the gross transmisogyny)!

Yuri Alexander is a genius.

A bleeding chested, crisply dressed, expertly sculpted genius, inhaling smoke and exhaling revenge. The world’s most perfect chain smoker.

Yuri coughs, a fountain of blood spurting from his lips like a display at the Bellagio.

Smash-cut to a week ago. Smash cut to a better moment. Smash cut to the interior of a restored 1950’s convertible.

“We’re all born to be somebody else’s dream and when they realize we aren’t what they hoped for, we become their greatest disappointment. It is what it is,” Yuri says from the driver’s seat, touching up his Violet Jasper lips. “The trick is to become your own greatest disappointment then crush it until it’s no longer recognizable.”

The backseat rattles with a forceful stomp and matching wail from the trunk. Yuri ignores it. It becomes a symbol, a rosary, a blind spot as big as a parent’s disappointment. It’s a fucking disaster, is what it is, but Yuri would never own up to it.

“You’re not Mark Palasio anymore. You’re Jefferson Templeton,” Yuri says, adjusting his neatened blouse in the rearview. “You’re an oil magnate’s son. Daddy dropped dead. This is a mansion of mourning. Make your daddy proud. Explore his new sarcophagus.”

Yuri and Mark step delicately from the car, shutting the doors with all the grace of new money gone wrong. Mark trails after Yuri, combat boots after high heels, silence after sound. The thing about people who command attention is they absorb all of it. It creates black holes around them. No parent would want their child trapped in that event horizon. Not even God could have wanted something like that in existence.

Mark looks up to the sun hanging high in the sky as they approach the mansion’s landing, just to whisper an apology in his head.

_It’s a very good black hole._

_Sorry, mom. Sorry, God._

Either way, the earth doesn’t rattle and the sky doesn’t crack at his words. Instead, Yuri climbs the stairs like a fucking movie star and greets the tired, blue-eyeshadowed realtor.

“Yuri Saint James,” he says confidently, thrusting his bony hand out for the agent to shake. “This is my client, Jefferson Templeton. We’ll let you know should we require your assistance”

Yuri traipses off through the entryway, leaving the shell of one mister Templeton to awkwardly nod and shuffle away from the agent. She looks halfway convinced and less than pleased to be abandoned at the entry in her finest three-season-old tweed skirt and jacket ensemble, but real estate agents are piranhas. Especially the high dollar ones with a noisy brood and boring husband waiting for them to get home to cook unseasoned chicken and green beans for dinner. Drop a little blood in the water, and they’ll always come around sniffing the YSL scented waves.

“Jefferson, if you please,” Yuri’s voice wafts down the hallway. Jefferson follows slowly, tracing the elaborate patterns of elaborately priced wallpaper as he goes. He comes to a stop in time to see Yuri’s favorite Louboutins clomp up the stairs. There’s no choice but to follow, and if that isn’t just a metaphor for his entire life, Jefferson isn’t really sure what is.

Upstairs, the duo pull up into the master suite, where Yuri promptly throws himself down into an overstuffed sea of blankets and throw pillows. He’s a future fallen queen in an elaborate display, a corpse that death hasn’t found yet. Maybe God just isn’t ready to meet him face to face. It’s fair. Who knows who’d come out on top of that one.

“I can see your thoughts, darling,” he drawls, running his elegant touch over hand beaded slipcovers. “The point of all these trappings is to enjoy them, wouldn’t you agree? All these rich widows exploring their carb loaded dreams never lay a single finger on these sheets. That, in my opinion, is the greatest tragedy. Somebody has to enjoy all that cash flow.”

Yuri sits up in his silken cloud and gestures for Jefferson to help him up.

“On to the bigger goal.”

Yuri wanders into the master bathroom, making a beeline for the vanity drawers. This part is old hat by now, a modern art gallery heist they’ve practiced from old blueprints until the creases have gone ragged and full of holes. Yuri opens and closes cut crystal knobbed mahogany until he finds his prize.

“If only we could all be so medicated,” he quips, unearthing several large bottles of pills. “At any rate, these’ll do.”

He shoves the bottles to the bottom of his Balenciaga and leaves everything as it was, no trace of their crime. There’s something to be said about stealing pills from rich old bats to peddle to young broken assholes. What, exactly, that something is remains to be seen. That’s modern philosophy for you.

“The money from these should get us the rest of the way. Are you ready to reclaim your story?”

Jefferson hesitates, closes his eyes. Insert intense zoom until the camera focuses on just the face. Focus on dramatic, slow motion opening of determined lids. Follow it with a resolute nod of the head. Cue Canon Rebel shutter clicks as photographers take stills for the movie posters.

_Give me angst._

Flash.

_Give me regret._

Flash.

_Give me a choice._

Flash.

The duo beelines from the house, snatching up the agent’s card from a marble table, promises of calling should they be interested swirling in their wake. They keep a bottle of the Oxy but sell the rest to the local pushers for enough to keep sailing down the road to their target: Isabella Yang’s rapidly approaching nuptials.

Here’s some cosmic fucking destiny for you: Isabella Yang tried to murder Mark Palasio once. It was a misunderstanding. Of a sort.

You see, Mark had something Isabella wanted pretty badly. Bad enough to kill for. Problem was, that something wanted her right back. It was fine. JJ was an asshole, anyway.

But now, she’s getting married. And it’s not to JJ. He went missing. Isabella lost her little mind when it happened. Caused a scene. Caused several, actually. Up and down the East Coast. Her family decided the best course of action was to marry her off before she could light anything on fire. She was none too pleased. Imagine, losing your one shot at snuffing your biggest rival, being abandoned by your man, and being sold to the highest bidder after your shit just can’t shake out.Tragic.

 _Still_ , Yuri told Mark when he heard about the wedding, _it’s only polite to send a gift. It’s goddamn saintly to hand-deliver._

The lid of the trunk shakes on its hinges as a pounding fist slams into the sheet metal. Yuri leans into the backseat and grabs a bottle of water.

“I’ll give you this much, Mark. You certainly have expressive taste.”

He pops the trunk and leans in. Mark stands just behind him and watches as he tugs a bandana off of JJ Leroy’s spit slick, chapped mouth.

“Hey there, big shot. Time for another meal,” Yuri says sweetly. He shakes four of the pills from the bottle and shoves them in JJ’s mouth, chasing them with the water bottle. Mark lays a steady hand over JJ’s nose, forcing him to gulp the water as Yuri rubs his throat and whispers soothing platitudes like he’s giving a show poodle a worm pill. JJ swallows furiously, tears streaking from his eyes.

Yuri once told Mark that the only time we see a person’s true self is when they’re angry and scared. Turns out JJ is an ugly crier. Who knew.

Yuri slams the trunk closed and off they go.

The final three days of their Thelma & Louise spirit journey slink past on waves of Marc Jacobs and some light felony committing. JJ is still drugged up in the trunk when Yuri parks the freshly washed convertible in front of the tacky McMansion the Yang family has selected to officially dump their problem onto someone else. It’s a glorious, hideous thing, all cobbled together from Frankenstein pieces of several centuries’ styles of wealth. It’s a Xerox of columns and arches, faxed through to a lottery winner, Xeroxed again, and blown up to live in. If that’s not a metaphor for something, Mark is hard-pressed to know what is.

The bulk of the guests are already inside, grating organ music blaring across the lawn. Isabella is nothing if not ostentatious, a fact Mark is loathe to remember. Yuri steps gracefully from the driver’s seat, smoothing out his tasteful white suit. Mark thinks it’s a bit much just to make a statement, but the thing about statements is they must be made. Who better to shout them from a pair of Ferragamo loafers than Yuri?

The trunk pops open and Yuri gestures to Mark.

“Are you ready to drag your demons through the mud?”

It’s a little dramatic, but isn’t it all? Yuri is nothing but drama, a silver starlet collapsing dramatically across a velvet chaise, betrayal in her eyes and pleas on her lips. He could do so much better than this, really. Mark still doesn’t know why he doesn’t.

Mark nods his head and reaches down for JJ’s feet. He’s still out, Yuri having given him a double dose at the state line. It makes him unbearably heavy and hard to maneuver, but Yuri slips well-tailored forearms under his sweaty pits and tugs him around with ease.

The duo carry him into the lobby of the home, and if it wasn’t too much outside, it definitely is inside. Faux-Grecian vases jammed with over-scented roses and peonies rest on every available surface. Tasteful fairy lights drip from handrails and ceilings. Baby pink tulle gathers and floats on chairs. It’s a modern dedication to romance as dictated by soaps and movies and people with too much time on their hands. It’s disgusting.

“She really loves her frills, huh?” Yuri asks casually, dragging JJ through the entryway. “I would say something about what it represents, but I feel like you may already know.”

They find a coat closet and shove JJ inside, crumpled on the floor like some terribly groomed ragdoll. Yuri snaps the door closed on him and turns to Mark.

“This is how he lived his life with you. Might as well make him comfortable.”

He snaps open his Ferragamo bag (“ _If there’s one thing a wedding dictates, it’s that the bag_ must _match the shoes, dear._ ”) and withdraws a pair of gloves as he leads Mark away to take their seats in the wedding hall proper. As he floats along, Yuri gingerly pulls on each one, flexing his knuckles beneath the material.

“A little chilly in here, don’t you think?”

Mark is unable to answer. Mark has always been unable to answer. Mark will always be unable to answer. Made to suffer, lot in life, etcetera, etcetera. Except now, Mark really fucking wishes his voice box still worked. They’re seated and prim, but as Mark looks across the room, he sees her. Isabella. Her seething face peeking through shining velvet curtains. Her always too-red lips pressed harshly in a thin line. She’s always been a gorgeous creature, he thinks offhandedly. And ain’t that some shit.

Isabella disappears into the depths of the drapery and the organ begins to play in earnest. A moment later, the doors to the hall part and everyone stands to attention as Isabella’s father tugs her inside.

She’s beautiful and wretched walking down the aisle toward her beige, beige fiance. Her body floats along, wrapped in a silk and organza confection worth more money than Mark thinks he’s ever even seen at one time. Only the telltale splotches of red dusted along her shoulders betray her true feelings.

Shutters click all around the room as multiple professional photographers document her journey.

_Give me abandonment._

Flash.

_Give me betrayal and despair._

Flash.

_Give me a woman who thought she was some real hot shit for a minute._

Flash.

The ceremony begins and Mark is bored. He can tell Yuri is too, but his shoulders remain set, his legs delicately crossed. The couple declares their unending love and devotion to each other (the prenup most likely requires at least ten years of it, anyway), and their families shed crocodile tears at the loss of their sweet, sweet babies.

The preacher asks for objections. The room is silent.

There’s always a moment during these things, that strange handful of seconds where time lapses and drips slowly. Everyone is a witness to these moments, a participant, an observer. Every single person is praying for excitement. Everyone on Earth wants a trainwreck to watch just so they can bemoan the horrors afterward from the safety of their couch.

The preacher asks again.

The double doors crash open.

JJ stumbles inside, a drugged shoulder dragging against the threshold.

Yuri’s hand finds Mark’s and squeezes.

Isabella’s eyes narrow. Her head swivels directly to Yuri and Mark in their seats. The audience gasps in shock and delight. Isabella’s fiance sighs. JJ falls to the floor.

“Bells?” he croaks, and it’s perfectly timed. It’s perfectly raspy, perfectly longing, perfectly confused, perfectly obnoxious. Mark wants to grind the heel of his shoe into his perfect nose. Isabella screams from the altar.

“This is our cue to leave,” Yuri whispers, dragging Mark from his seat.

The audience remains silent and still as Yuri Alexander and Mark Palasio exit stage right.

It’s a curious thing, impending doom. You feel it in your gut, something twisting and writhing, but you can’t quite put a name to it until the moment has passed. Mark feels it. Mark stifles it. Mark stifles a great many things these days.

They’re almost to the front door when Mark hears the racking of a shotgun.

“You fuckers aren’t going _anywhere_ ,” Isabella growls.

Books and magazines describe the few moments in which you confront your impending doom as slow. They say every second drags out into multitudes. They say your mind flashes over key times in your life that it wants to remind you of before you shuffle off this mortal coil. Slides in a very long, very boring show. It’s all so sad and romantic.

Truth is, the few seconds it takes for Yuri and Mark to turn around and find Isabella standing behind them with a shotgun like some sort of spoiled wraith take no more or less than any other stretch of time Mark has ever experienced. The moments in which Isabella delicately sets the butt of the gun against her shoulder and slips a perfectly manicured index finger against the trigger pass like any other Monday. The seconds in which Yuri shoves Mark behind himself with just enough time to take the blast feel just like any other afternoon during which Mark may be ordering a salad in a restaurant. That is to say, watching Yuri take a shotgun shell to the chest feels no different than any other stretch of time in which Mark may have done some everyday thing.

It feels mundane.

It feels empty.

It’s pretty fucked up.

Yuri collapses to the ground, taking Mark down with him. Mark gathers Yuri in his lap, perfectly arranging his limbs in an attractive display. Above all things, Yuri must always be presentable. Mark owes him this. A little bit. Maybe.

Isabella roars out her sorrow, or whatever the fuck she’s convinced herself she’s allowed to feel. She reaches between the perfectly sculpted globes of fifteen thousand dollar tits and withdraws another shotgun shell. It’s hot pink, because of course it is.

“I always knew I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

She loads the bullet in the gun.

“I always knew you’d be the one thing to come back and haunt me.”

The butt of the gun finds her shoulder again. This time, her aim is a little wilder, a little looser with adrenaline. She squeezes the trigger, but the shot goes high, splattering the wood door behind Mark. He doesn’t even flinch. That would be concerning if it wasn’t just another symptom of how his life has just gone completely off the rails.

Isabella screams again, only this time it’s because she’s being tackled to the ground by her one true love. Like an oily, smelly, slightly emaciated prince come to rescue his princess from her personal evil witch, JJ swoops in and saves Isabella from herself. It’s poetic, the way two absolute assholes can find each other this way. The world prefers bold beauty and dim wits, though. Always has, always will. A truth universally acknowledged and all that.

JJ wrestles to subdue Isabella just across the marble entryway floor. The smell of smoke hits Mark’s nose. Yuri coughs wetly and grips Mark’s lapel. It’s all very dramatic. Typical.

JJ sniffs exaggeratedly.

“Bells, what did you do?”

“What I should have done a long time ago, Jean.”

It would seem her parents couldn’t keep her from lighting a fire after all.

“Mark,” Yuri whispers, dropping his hand back to his lap. “I should tell you the truth. You should know the truth.”

Mark looks curiously down at Yuri, his expertly shaped blonde brows knitting together as he puts his thoughts in order.

“When they come to ask about this, I want you to tell the world about me. The real me. Can you do that?”

Mark takes his hand and nods. It’s the least he can do, really. He’s never felt so alive as he has trailing after Yuri around the country on a quest for self-discovery and revenge. Thelma & Louise indeed.

Smoke begins to thickly fill the room. Mark can hear Isabella’s parents desperately directing guests out of the building, while still ensuring they avoid the scene in the lobby. Even as their facade crumbles around them, they can’t help but to try and keep it up. It’s rather pedestrian of them, if you ask Mark.

“Yuri Plisetsky met Otabek Altin when he was twelve,” Yuri begins. Mark tilts his head closer to listen. “We went to this LGBT summer retreat that our parents tried to pretend was a sports camp. I would say something about that, but you know how I feel already.”

Mark squeezes Yuri’s hand. If there’s anything Yuri hates, it’s pretense. You should be who you are. Do what you want, not what they want you to want. It’s the realest thing about Yuri.

Sirens sound down the lane. Smoke floods through the cracks in the doors. Yuri coughs around it, puffing clouds like a dragon.

“Otabek Altin was the coolest guy I’d ever seen in my life. Tan, serious, handsome. He wore this leather jacket that set the whole look off just right. We were just kids, but I remember looking at him and thinking, ‘My god, that fucking jaw. That jaw is going to kill several people some day. A mass murder at the hands of a sharp angle.’ From that point forward, I was ruined.”

Blue and red flashing lights fill the room, bouncing off the grey smoke. Mark heaves a strangled cough. JJ and Isabella scramble up from the floor to run away. Rats will always scurry, after all.

“We hung out all summer, me and Otabek. At the end of camp, we parted ways and lost contact. I always thought about him, though. I took influence from our time together. I thought maybe, just maybe, if I became the kind of person that could look natural standing beside a guy like that, then I would have made myself into who I was always meant to be.”

Yuri’s eyes droop and his speech slows. Mark sets a hand against Yuri’s cheek gently. He turns into the touch, pressing a kiss to Mark’s palm.

“Time marched on. I changed myself, remade myself into who I wanted to be. Left my disappointments behind and wrote a new story. Got a new name. Got new money. But I always kept a weather eye out for Otabek Altin. He was my green light across the water, you know.”

Mark huffs a laugh. Even in death, Yuri is philosophical.

“Otabek became a model. He was always gorgeous, but damn if puberty didn’t make him an adonis. He did all these print ads, some commercials, real big-time shit, you know?” Yuri coughs again. “But his eyes. They were never there. He was him, but he wasn’t _him_.”

Mark remembers those ads. The gorgeous, oiled muscles and dead, dead eyes.

“It wasn’t a surprise, really, when he shot himself. But it was a chance for me to find him again.”

Mark raises an eyebrow at that. Yuri laughs, bright and choked out. Blood splatters from his lips again, spraying over the crumpled chest of his bright white suit.

“I never said I was completely selfless. Or even a little selfless. That’s another expectation the world places on us that I just don’t agree with. You can be a little selfish. It’s quite invigorating. Anyway,” -Yuri waves the thought away with a flick of his wrist- “I was able to track him down. And it was a complete accident. The universe wants what it wants. I was in a private hospital for a nose job when he was brought in. Shot himself in the face. Fucked his jaw all up, severed his vocal cords, disfigured himself all to hell. The bravest shit I’d ever seen in my life.”

Mark recalls reading the newspaper articles all about it.

**TRAGIC BEAUTY: MODEL’S SHOT AT FAME CUT SHORT**

**A SHOT IN THE DARK: MODEL PERMANENTLY INJURED IN GUN ACCIDENT**

**MODEL’S CAREER SILENCED AT THE END OF A GUN BARREL**

The editors had a real field day with that one.

“I couldn’t just leave him be. I couldn’t let it go. I needed to help him. I knew Otabek’s little accident wasn’t an attempt at suicide. It was a power move. He wanted to take himself back. I wanted to help him. So I stayed as he healed. I made him tell me his story. I made him tell it, and tell it, and tell it until it didn’t matter anymore. We hatched a plan, Otabek and I, and we put it into motion.”

His eyes sweep around the room. Mark strokes his hand across Yuri’s pale, clammy skin. It’s cold to the touch. Ready for death. Yuri has never looked so beautiful. How he does it, Mark will never know.

“You see, Otabek had it all. A career, a lover, a life of his own. But he was betrayed. His lover’s lover came in the night, offers of friendship heavy on her tongue. Otabek didn’t see it for the treason it was. Not until he found her perched on his chest holding a butcher’s knife a week later, anyway. Que sera sera.”

Whatever will be, will be.

“And I loved Otabek Altin, I think. I loved him more than anything. So I helped him plot revenge. I only wanted his happiness.”

Yuri raises his own trembling hand, weak with blood loss and weighed down with golden rings. He clasps it around the hand Mark has set gently against his cheek. His eyes slip closed as his breath goes even more labored and slow.

“I only wanted your happiness,” he whispers.

In this moment, he’s every dramatic moment ever played out on screen. He’s Veronica Sawyer with a red scrunchie, Marlena Evans in a white nightgown, Mr. Orange and Mr. White and Nice Guy Eddie pointing their guns all at once. With his last, great gasping breath, Yuri becomes his very own Joan of Arc.

Yuri Alexander dies in Mark Palasio’s arms like a murdered prom queen in a daytime drama - all dramatic gasps and trembles. His long limbs flail and go limp. His picture perfect cascade of store bought hair tumbles delicately over the slope of a sharp shoulder. His Gucci lipstick is flawless and even. His blood coats the floor in an artful pool, slowly spreading across Mark’s lap to make a clean break for the headlines Yuri will undoubtedly become. Mark can hear the photographers taking their dramatic photos now.

_Give me heartbreak._

Flash.

_Give me torture._

Flash.

_Give me the loss of your best and only friend._

Flash.

An end is a beginning, as they say. The truth will set you free or some shit like that, right?

The truth is, Yuri Alexander is really Yuri Saint James is really Yuri Plisetsky. Yuri Plisetsky is dead. Long live Yuri Plisetsky. Long live the drama. Long live the bullshit it took for Mark Palasio to figure out who he is. Who he was.

Yuri Plisetsky was a genius.

The truth is, Mark Palasio is really Jefferson Templeton is really Otabek Altin. Otabek Altin is me. Long live Otabek Altin. Long live the eternal transformation. Long live the endless spiral of wasted potential and hopeful yearning to love just one thing and have it last.

Long live the disappointment.

Sorry, mom.

Sorry, God.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to scoot on by and see me on [tumblr](http://tootsonnewts.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/_tootsonnewts) (where i'm much more active these days).


End file.
